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Amul has pinned a controversial tweet that appears to promote the boycott of Chinese products after its account was briefly restricted last week.
#Amul Topical: About the boycott of Chinese products... pic.twitter.com/ZITa0tOb1h
— Amul.coop (@Amul_Coop) June 3, 2020
After this tweet (above) was published, Twitter had blocked Amul's account causing massive outrage on Twitter in India.
In a conversation with a news channel, RS Sodhi, the managing director of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation, also known as Amul, defended the message, stated that the Amul Girl campaign has been around for 55 years and frequently comments on topical issues related to what's happening in India or around the world. The image merely reflects the mood of the nation, he argued.
Through his Twitter account, Sodhi then stated that Twitter India managing director Manish Maheshwari reached out to him to explain the account was blocked due to technical reasons and not in relation to the content published.
According to a statement from Twitter, the blockage was due to a simple authentication issue:
“Safety and security of the accounts is a key priority for us and to ensure an account has not been compromised sometimes we require the account owner to complete a simple reCAPTCHA process. These challenges are simple for authentic account owners to solve, but difficult (or costly) for spammy or malicious account owners to complete," Twitter's statement read. "Once the account clears this security step the account regains full access. To protect the accounts we routinely require them to clear this security key for login verification.”